Her mind flew back to the wedding-day, to those words from Macgowan, to the honeymoon and the little Armstrong had ever said about the manner in which he had taken over Food Products. She found herself recalling little things, hitherto unnoted; words, acts, looks. Could there be some truth, after all, in the calumny? Had Armstrong really put her father out of the company--was that why he had persistently remained out? Williams ought to know, if any one did. Shame flamed into her--shame, anger at herself for allowing such thoughts entrance in her mind. Of course it was a lie, a calumny! All of it! For the remainder of that evening, Dorothy was in turmoil. She made no mention of all this to Armstrong. Later, while he slept, she lay beside him wide-eyed and sleepless, and there fought out the decision within her own heart. It did not occur to her that Ried Williams might have directed those words at her ear, instead of being ignorant that she overheard them. It was perhaps unfortunate for Dorothy that she had never been one of the "wise virgins" who predominate in social life. She was not one of those charmingly sophisticated damsels who find in wedded life nothing very new or startling, and who are almost as conversant with the symptoms and experiences of motherhood before the fact as they are after it. Dorothy's education and nurture had all trended in the other direction; in the direction of old-fashioned delicacy, of hopelessly antiquated reverence for the facts of life. With all the charm of her upbringing, the moderns could have argued that she had been left a little too ignorant, for to her there were yet countless mysteries unguessed and depths unfathomed. Convinced of her own expectant motherhood, it was perhaps for this reason that she found herself a prey to shrinking timidity, to a mental fear and terror which had small basis in actual fact. On some unremembered occasion, from some half-understood conversation, she had received an implanted seed which now blossomed and bore dark fruit. She firmly believed that a woman in a "delicate condition" was liable to strange mental reactions, was subject to delusions and obsessions. She had a terrible fear lest some such delusion take hold upon her. She did not know that this fear might in itself provoke the thing that was feared. "I must say nothing of all this to Reese," she thought, firmly pressing the resolve into her whole self, as she lay there staring into the darkness. "I must dismiss it, forget it! I know that it is a contemptible lie. I must never think of it again. It is too low, too utterly despicable, too unclean, ever to gain harborage in my mind. So is that man Williams. I shall never think of him again. I shall shut my mind to the whole thing; it is unworthy of me, unworthy of Reese! Unless I do, it may become an obsession, it may make me cruel and unjust and may hurt the little one--"